


Five Things Eugenides Stole, Plus One He Gave Back

by FairestCat



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Family, Future Fic, Gen, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairestCat/pseuds/FairestCat
Summary: A Thief is only as good as the things he steals.





	Five Things Eugenides Stole, Plus One He Gave Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/gifts).



> Betaed by the most marvellous oliviacirce.

  1. **An Opal Fibula Pin**



 

Eugenides’s mother smiled to herself as she watched her youngest son openly attempt to filch his father’s cloak pin six times between breakfast and dinner. The seventh time he almost managed it. He was halfway to the door, pin in hand, when his father reached out with one long arm, grabbed him by the back of the shirt, and lifted him straight off the floor.

“I think you’ll find that this is mine,” he said, prying open Gen’s tightly-clenched fist.

As soon as the pin was out of his hand, Gen twisted out of his father’s grasp and ran, giggling, from the room.

His mother turned her face away so her husband would not see her smile, which meant she missed seeing the exact moment when the Minister of War realized that while he was getting his cloak pin back, his wayward son had slipped the gold seal ring right off his finger.

 

* * *

 

  1. **A Single Tourmaline Earring**



 

Timos wasn’t the worst of his tormentors, but he was the one Gen had most expected to be on his side. They were the closest in age and so had been put together often as children, and while they had drifted apart in adolescence, Gen still thought of him as a friend.

And yet, sometimes, it was Timos’s foot tripping him up as he crossed the dining room. It was Timos’s shoulder shoving him out of the way on the stairs. And when Titus went too far and broke one of Gen’s ribs, Timos was there in the crowd, carefully avoiding Gen’s angry eyes.

Later that night, after Galen had wrapped his ribs and given him strict instructions to rest, Gen was startled out of his plans for revenge by a tentative knock on his door. Gen yanked the door open, silently took the offered bruise balm from Timos’s hands, and closed the door in his face before he could get a word out.

One of the tourmaline earrings Timos had saved up for all summer was found on the altar to the God of Thieves the next morning. Timos never mentioned it, just smiled ruefully as he sat next to Gen at the dinner table that night, and every night for the next week, making friendly conversation as if nothing had ever come between them at all.  
  


* * *

 

  1. **A Carved Bone Comb**



 

The negotiations for Sophos and the Magus’s return to Sounis took many weeks, but Eugenides’s convalescence took longer.

The evening the new treaty between Eddis and Sounis was finalized, the Magus went to Gen’s room to give him the news. They talked for only a few minutes, with the Magus promising to bring Sophos with him the next morning to say a proper goodbye, since the Thief was still confined to his bed and would not be able to see them off.

The next morning, when he was unable to find the comb he was sure he’d left by his bed, he put it down to the chaos of packing. It was a good comb, finely carved, but not a particularly expensive or cherished one. He borrowed a comb from one of the Sounisian soldiers sent to escort them home, and forgot the incident entirely.

He remembered it again many days later when, unpacking his bags back in the Megaron of the King of Sounis, his hand closed around a familiar shape. But it wasn’t his own modest comb he pulled from his bag, but rather one of finely carved tortoiseshell with long teeth capped in gold -- the kind a vain young man might purchase when he came into unexpected wealth.

 

* * *

 

  1. **A Copper Ring Bearing the Seal of the God Miras**



 

Costis had become used to beginning his days sparring with the King. This morning Eugenides had been particularly hard on him, and he’d landed on his back a half dozen times. Each time the King had leaned down and pulled him up, left hand to left hand, giving him a teasing smile and a pat on the back before tearing into him again. The last time he helped Costis up, Eugenides had fumbled his grip three times, an uncharacteristic clumsiness Costis had credited to the better-than-usual fight he’d put up that time around.

It wasn’t until the light caught it as he was leaving the bathhouse that Costis realized something was different about his ring. Even when it was brand new, the copper ring of Miras -- the soldier’s patron god of light and arrows -- he wore on his left hand had never  _ glistened _ .

He held his hand up in the sunlight. His finger was still discolored by the familiar green of his copper ring, but the one on his hand now was most definitely gold. The seal was still that of Miras, but more delicate and finely wrought than anything a humble guard could afford on his own.

Sighing, Costis switched the ring to his right hand. If he left it where it was, the copper staining would never fade, and besides, for all the seal was the same, he suspected he was wearing a token to a different god now.

* * *

 

  1. **A Gold and Silver Arm Band, A Garnet Bracelet, and An Amber Buckle**



 

The arm band disappeared two weeks after Sophos left for Sounis with a combined army of Attolian and Eddisian soldiers at his back. Helen, who had not been sleeping well -- plagued by nightmares of everything that might go wrong with their fragile plan -- didn’t notice it was gone until her attendant brought it to her attention the next morning. She thought briefly that Eugenides might have taken it, and then dismissed the thought. A simple arm band wasn’t nearly flashy enough for her cousin’s tastes.

When, a week after his mother and sisters arrived in the Attolian capitol, Sophos still hadn’t left Brimedius, a favourite garnet bracelet disappeared from Helen’s wrist. She was so busy being angry at Gen, and trying fruitlessly to retrieve her bracelet before it made it onto the altar to his god, that she forgot to worry about Sophos for almost twenty-four hours.

The day word came that Sophos had finally left Brimedius accompanied by Baron Hanaktos and the Mede Ambassador, it was the amber buckle off of one sleeve of a dress she knew Gen had always hated.

She pulled him aside after dinner. “I begin to question your hospitality, cousin. Do all your guests lose so much property within your walls?”

Gen feigned innocence, but Helen was the one person who’d always been able to stare him down. When his studied indifference gave way to a wry grin, she softened her tone. “You cannot steal away my worry, Gen. It is mine and I do not wish you to take it from me.”

The day Sophos returned to Attolia, the missing arm band and the missing buckle appeared on Helen’s bedside table. She decided she could forgive Gen, and his god, the sacrifice of her bracelet.

 

* * *

 

  1. **Five Ivory Hairpins**



 

The King of Attolia reached out and caught his youngest child around the waist, pulling her into his lap and deftly plucking the collection of hairpins from her nimble fingers. Helen giggled and made a valiant effort to nab one of the buttons off his sleeve as she wriggled off his lap and ran from the room. At seven she had the dexterity for light thievery, but not yet the subtlety to escape without getting caught. 

On the other side of the sitting room, the Queen of Attolia was doing her best to look stern while holding her hair up with her hands, but her husband could see the laugh lines around her eyes.

Gen grinned as he walked across the room. “I believe these are yours,” he said, settling into the seat next to Irene and placing the pins in her lap.

Irene shot him a dark look, but started deftly replacing the pins in her hair. “She says she wants to be the next Thief of Eddis,” she said casually, as she twisted the last strands into place. 

There was silver in that dark hair now, to go with the lines around her eyes. He smiled at the visible signs of the years they’d spent together and brushed a kiss against her temple. “And yet, there are fewer people in Eddis every year. By the time I’m willing to concede the title, I suspect it will have rather lost its luster.”

“And what if it has not?”

“Then everyone left in Eddis will have to keep a sharp eye on their hair pins.”


End file.
